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Guest Poet Sara Trevisan

The Balance

Let me be surrounded by gentle views,
By noble thoughts with scents of roses --
Let me stare at the sunset, alone,
Enchanted by the voice of my private Muse.
Let metaphysics devour me to the bone,
So that I won't ever touch the solid ground.
I don't want to be any new Moses,
Threatening his people with what must be done,
Speaking stony, thundering words.
I couldn't tell god from the wind's sound.
I just listen to the morning birds,
To the days and years that leave and come.
This is the balance of madness, you see --
Where I hide myself from unknown enemies
Who, instead, know me.

September, 2002

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Thames

Thoughtful Thames slowly advances
On his ancient carpet,
Weighing up each step
As if containing all of all minds' chances --
Lingering his glance once on the south
Then on the north,
Unaware, he'll drag onto his watery drain --
Adamant, up to the mouth --
Night's soft voices and flick'ring lights,
Entangled in the net of Life's matt draining.
He'll take away the memories, the plights,
The laughs and kisses, besides the Sunset's pain.
River Thames is London's sky --
The greatest truth and truest lie.

September, 2002

Sara Trevisan's questions:

(The questions are the same for both poems.)

1) Are indefinite expression a symptom of poeticity or of inability to cope with a wider range of words?

2) I prefer visual imagery in poetry to complicated thoughts and lexicon. Does it make poetry more naive nowadays? (because in Dante's time poety was most of all visual).